Friday, July 22, 2011

So we've been following the great Bakerella for awhile now and we haven't had the courage to tackle cake pops, but we finally decided to just go for it and let's just say things didn't go quite how we imagined. We thought (naively) that they wouldn't be too hard. After the day we had, we definitely ate our words and now have even more respect for what Bakerella does. So sit tight and let Sugi spin you a tale of frustration, a complete mental meltdown, the Great Chocolate Fiasco of 2011, and the eventual second wind that led us to finish the darn things.

Our day started with bright optimism as we had been looking forward to finally getting around to making cake pops. We had a solid plan for our day; I had baked red velvet cake and made cream cheese frosting the night before, we had all our supplies gathered, we had picked a theme (the minions from Despicable Me) and we were happy and full of energy.

Things started off great as we had no problem with the first few steps of Bakerella's basic cake pop instructions. As our little minions sat chilling we decided to melt our chocolate. This is where our day started falling apart. I ended up overcooking the chocolate and we had to wait until Ai's boyfriend got off work to make another run to the store for more. At this point we weren't too worried about things. We decided to move on and make the eyes and hands for the minions. We used marshmallow fondant we made using this recipe and since fondant is like clay we had no problems at all.

With nothing left to do for awhile we took a break to make and eat dinner. Afterwards, Ai's boyfriend arrived like a wonderful chocolate angel with LOTS of chocolate. We were finally able to get back to work and were again optimistic. We were excited when the chocolate melted beautifully, however this joy was short lived. We added yellow gel food coloring to the chocolate and it made it super thick! We had a moment of panic, but after reading the directions on the back of the chocolate realized we could save it with vegetable shortening!

So with our chocolate salvaged we were once again optimistic and excited to start dipping our little minions. And again our hopes were squashed. The minions were not turning out nice at all! Our chocolate was still thick even after we added more vegetable shortening. We decided to just keep going and keep dipping these ugly little things. As we let the chocolate set on the pops, we realized that many of them were cracking! At this point in the night, we were completely heartbroken, cursing like sailors, and vowing to never touch another cake pop again.

I'm not quite sure what made us decide to continue working; maybe it was because we had already invested so much in the pops, or how late it was getting, or how far gone our minds were at this point. So after making some royal icing to use as glue and decoration, we trucked on like the stubborn fools that we are and actually started decorating the pops. After all the hiccups we had, turns out our cake pops weren't half bad. We even started joking that even when we fail we win and that it was because we drink Tigerblood, that duh, we were winners!

Okay so enough of this boo hoo, poor us story. I'm sure you're all just curious to see the pictures. So on to the pictures folks!

The minions! We forgot to get styrofoam blocks for the pops and improvised with dixie cups. haha

See we really did put them on lollipop sticks!

Mmmmm red velvet brains!

Ai made amazing Mario Piranha Plants!

We made some random pandas and a strawberry!

Ai made a cute little pig!

So at the end of the day we actually did have a lot of fun making the pops. This whole experience was one we definitely learned from and we decided that we would like to make cake pops again! So before we sign off here are the things we learned and hopefully you won't repeat any of our mistakes:

If it is your first time making cake pops, it's probably a good idea not to be too ambitious with your design. (Overestimating our skills is obviously our fatal flaw! >_<)

Vegetable shortening is your best friend when it comes to working with chocolate! Keep adding some in until your chocolate runs like a smooth stream off a spoon. Towards the end of our dipping session we actually dipped really smooth pops after we had added more shortening.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

So according to the title this post is going to be all about HARRY POTTER!!!!! Here's a fun fact for all of you: Ai and I are super nerds about a lot of different things and Harry Potter is naturally one of those things we love! In honor of the final movie we made some Harry Potter themed things. We had a lot of fun with these projects and couldn't wait to post this up. So enough of my rambling and on to the stuffs!

Ai's mom is also a fan of Harry Potter so we made her some magnets!

Our gang of HP magnets. I did the top row and broom and Ai did the bottom row and the Sorting Hat!

Ai did the golden trio and twins

I did Dumbledore, Hagrid, Ginny, Luna, and Neville

I wanted to make Dobby look really nice because he's Ai's mom's favorite!

The twins!

Neville ended up looking like a young Snape! lol

Ron!

Harry!

Hermione!

Luna!

Ginny! (my scarf is not as nice as Ai's! lol >_<)

Everyone's favorite groundskeeper!

R.I.P. Dumbledore! :(

Ai made Hedwig!

Ai's amazing Sorting Hat!

Ai's super adorable Pigwidgeon!

I really love making decorated shortbread cookies so I decided it would be awesome to make HP ones. I taught Ai and our friend Thao how to decorate cookies so the cookies were a collaborative effort. I didn't have HP shaped cookie cutters, so most of these cookies are cut by hand. And if you've never cut cookies by hand, it is time consuming (though it was definitely worth it because we love Harry Potter)! Now on to the cookies!

All the cookies we made!

Some random HP related items

Harry's glasses

A wand casting a spell

Hedwig

A random owl with a wizard's hat, maybe it's an animagus! lol

The Hogwarts Crest. I had the most fun doing this one!

The Crest of SugiAi! lol I like elephants and she likes pigs!

The people! Poor Hermione got fat in the oven, she looks like she should be Hagrid! hahahaha

Voldemort

Harry and his broom flying off to a new adventure!

I know that this was already a super long post, but because I am a sentimental fool I just want to say this: Thank you J.K. Rowling for creating these wonderful characters and beautiful world! Harry Potter and his grand adventure will live on forever in all of our hearts!

That's all for now folks! Go watch the final HP movie and enjoy it, it was really great!

Oh yeah one more thing, we joined the cool kids and are on Google+ our profile! We're not quite sure what we'll do with it, but it does have some more personal info about us on it, since we've been pretty vague here on the blog. So if you're already on Google+ don't hesitate to add us! ^_^